Yu Sheng felt that the plan the Captain was talking about was pretty badass.The others also felt that this plan was pretty badass.
Freyia was the exception—Freyia had been busy the whole time hanging herself from the ceiling pretending to be a chandelier, and had absolutely no idea what the Captain and Yu Sheng were talking about.
"World Ark… this thing sounds impressive," Yu Sheng rubbed his chin, but clearly still had a bellyful of questions, "but can it really work? How do you pull it off? Slap a Void Engine onto the entire Universe… is that actually doable?! How powerful would that engine have to be?!"
"In principle, the 'propulsion' capability of the Void Engine can't be measured with the simple concept of 'power,'" the Captain patiently explained, "its effective process is a kind of rewriting and overwriting on the mathematical level. Theoretically, as long as this overwriting effect can be synchronized to the world Barrier, we can achieve the Transfer of the entire observable Universe within the void.
"If we view the world as a large, self-consistent running dataset, then the world Barrier is the sum of all its external characteristics. Under normal circumstances, this sum of characteristics is immutable, but… our Universe is special.
"It originated from a ruin. I fused together remnants from various different worlds out of the ashes of Annihilation, so in order to achieve maximum compatibility for the overall system, I designed, in its foundational information structure at the birth of the world, a mechanism that can self-adapt and continuously recurse and replay itself…
"In other words, this Universe has in fact always been in an uninterrupted process of 'self-refresh and self-repair,' and that's what makes my plan feasible… its world Barrier can be modified. And back then, for debugging convenience, I even reserved a special interface for information injection; theoretically, this interface can also be reserved for the Void Engine."
"Wow…" the Little Puppet sat on the edge of the counter, arms folded and eyes wide, nodding over and over as she listened, "the topic has already advanced into a field I completely don't understand anymore…"
Yu Sheng rubbed his brow; honestly, he actually didn't understand either, but he simply didn't have Erin's kind of shameless pride-in-ignorance face, so he was still working hard to keep his thoughts in sync. And just as his brain was overloading, he suddenly remembered a question from the very start of this topic.
"Wait a sec, what does this have to do with the Dark Angel again? Didn't you say earlier that your plan still needed the 'help' of the Dark Angel?"
The Captain nodded lightly: "That's right, I did say that—it's very simple, I need the calibration information they can provide."
Yu Sheng frowned: "Calibration information? What do you mean?"
"My observation of the Sea of Annihilation is limited—and once the World Ark sets sail, that enormous 'world engine' will hardly have any chance to stop for adjustments. So the best approach is to add a calibration device to the engine itself, allowing it to continuously calibrate itself based on the characteristics of the Sea of Annihilation.
"In this regard, the best data source is those Dark Angels… they are products of the Great Annihilation; in fact, to some extent, they are the Sea of Annihilation itself.
"Each Dark Angel carries original data about the Great Annihilation, and even process data from after the Annihilation ends, when they, as world remnants, soak and dissolve in the void. This data is far more precise than anything I could get from observing the outside across the Barrier for 3,000 years."
Yu Sheng blinked; this time he kept up with the other's line of thought: "…so what you mean is, you're going to use the Dark Angels as raw material to manufacture the calibrators for the Void Engine?"
"More or less, but that wording isn't quite accurate," the Captain nodded, "I'm going to use the information they carry to construct the calibrators, but the process may not be what you imagine; it won't… 'consume' them.
"All I need is the information they carry, and in exchange, they will receive a place on the Ark. As long as we can solve the 'pollution' problem, a World Ark this large doesn't mind a bit of extra mass—this is a very suitable deal for both sides."
"A suitable deal…" Yu Sheng subconsciously repeated these words, and immediately associated it with something, turning his head to glance at Erin.
"…looks like you've thought of it," the Captain nodded lightly, "3,700 years ago, I managed to contact an Angel cluster that still retained its sanity—that cluster was made up of the remnants left after dozens of worlds crashed into Annihilation. Unfortunately, they hadn't managed to construct a temporary Sanctuary like the Endless Sea; they had only propped up a fragile… 'bubble' in the Sea of Annihilation.
"I made contact with a few sane individuals among them and reached an agreement—with the terms of that agreement, those Dark Angels created an 'Anchor projector' capable of piercing the world Barrier, and then the Dark Angel in the best condition carried out the projection.
"Her mission was to carry complete calibration data and the calibrator blueprint through the world Barrier, reach a suitable calibration point, then, according to the blueprint, convert the Anchor projector on-site into a calibrator and input the first batch of data."
The Captain paused here and let out a soft sigh.
"What happened after that… you already know. The attempt failed; that Anchor projector, which came to be known as the World Bridge, crashed into the real Universe, the 'omen' carrying the calibration data and blueprint went into loss of control and disappeared, and I also lost contact with that Angel cluster—Erin didn't make it back either."
Erin raised her hand: "I'm back now!"
The Captain laughed; his originally somewhat gloomy face now radiated a warm glow: "Mm, yes, yes, yes, you're back, that's what matters."
Next to him, the silver-haired Puppet lady slightly lowered her head and muttered to the Captain: "I already felt uneasy back then—how could it possibly work when the representative they sent over was literally called 'Omen'…"
The Captain also muttered under his breath: "Yet you two were chatting away like a house on fire back then…"
"I-I just thought she was really good at cat's cradle…"
Yu Sheng heard the Captain and the Puppet Progenitor muttering to each other, but his attention wasn't on them at all. When the Captain was halfway through his words just now, something had suddenly come back to him, and now a whole pile of past clues were playing like a movie in his head.
After two or three seconds, he finally couldn't hold back: "You just said, when the Omen Goddess came down, she brought the calibrator blueprint and the first batch of calibration data?"
"Yes," the Captain nodded slightly, "but that batch of precious data…"
"Might still be around," Yu Sheng cut him off before he finished, then raised his hand and pointed at the Little Puppet's head, "maybe… it's sitting right here."
The Captain: "…?"
Puppet Progenitor Alice: "…?"
Yu Sheng thought for a moment,整理了一下思路和语言: "Well, you might not be very clear on the exact course of that incident back then. I never had the chance to tell you. It went like this…"
Yu Sheng didn't hide anything. He described in full detail how Erin and the Omen Goddess perished together 3,700 years ago, then mentioned the World Bridge Descent that occurred above the Boundary Land, and finally how he led people to the ruins of the Omen Divine Temple to retrieve Erin's original body and eliminate the Omen Divine Corpse contamination.
In the end, he talked about Erin's current condition.
"That's how things stand right now. The two of them are actually fused together—Erin's Consciousness and memories are in control, and back then the Omen Goddess, in order to preserve a set of 'precious data', voluntarily chose to abandon most of her self-Consciousness."
Yu Sheng paused for two or three seconds at this point, then went on: "Right now that part of the data seems to still be inside Erin's Mind. When she connected to the Garden Network earlier, this part of the data was detected, but none of us could figure out what it was, and the data itself is highly encrypted. Neither she herself nor the extra compute power called in from the Garden Network could break that layer of encryption.
"If that encrypted data packet is the calibrator blueprint and calibration data you mentioned just now… then everything makes sense."
The Captain and the puppet lady listened carefully the whole time, their expressions constantly shifting. At this moment they couldn't help exchanging a glance, and then the puppet lady reached out and picked Erin up.
"You child…"
Erin folded her arms across her chest, smug: "You don't have to worry about me, I'm amazing! Back then I was actually the one who won, and I'm doing great now…"
"No, what I mean is, how were you that reckless," the Puppet Progenitor sighed, "before you set out I told you they were guests, and even if there really was an accident you had to first think of a way to see if you could help. How did you just pick up the pot and charge in… who did you learn that from?"
Erin blinked.
"From what I saw at the time, there really wasn't any other way. That thing had already fallen from the sky, and it had already smashed a hole in the Boundary Land. That big spider was lucid one moment and confused the next. I figured by the time I called in reinforcements, that hole probably wouldn't be plug-able anymore…"
"It was still that our arrangements back then weren't thorough enough," the Captain's voice came from the side, calm and steady. "After all, it was only the early stages of the plan. At that time both the calibrator and the void engine only existed at the blueprint stage. Even I couldn't predict the impact of many things… Alice, don't blame the child."
"Mm-hmm, I'm not blaming her, I just feel a bit heartbroken," the silver-haired puppet lady said as she lifted Erin up before her eyes, "look, the child came back all skinny…"
The Captain froze for two seconds, raised his hand and covered his forehead: "It's obviously not a 'skinny' issue…"
Erin thought about it and still didn't get it.
But being dangled by the Puppet Progenitor made her very happy; she even started swinging back and forth in midair, looking utterly pleased with herself.
Yu Sheng, meanwhile, was pondering another question.
"So the World Bridge, that Anchor projector you mentioned, is essentially just a calibrator?" He looked at the Captain, thinking aloud. "As long as there's a suitable blueprint, that thing can be converted into a calibrator for the void engine?!"
"Strictly speaking, the World Bridge is a carrier of multiple functions—the Dark Angels used their limited information and mass to build this special kind of 'escape route', and endowed it with the greatest possible potential. So as long as there's a suitable blueprint, the World Bridge can be reorganized at the information level into anything that can exist in the real Universe, and correspondingly, as long as the conditions are right, it can also generate… a reaction with anything in the real Universe."
"So that's how it is…"
Yu Sheng nodded, pinching his chin, lost in thought.